How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community

by Mia Birdsong

FRIENDSHIP PERMACULTURE When the regular demands of life sap our strategic thinking capacity, we can be less thoughtful about decisions we make about anything, including our relationships.

To be clear, there is no agreed-upon definition. A Genealogy of Queerplatonic (a potential rabbit hole) is helpful and can be found at https://theacetheist.wordpress.com/2019/03/09/a-genealogy-of-queer-platonic/. 5. Shon Faye, “What Does It Mean to Be Queer?” March 13, 2016, YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDO2-sNF2s4. 6

The family we make is as important as the family that makes us. —MALKIA DEVICH CYRIL

The Best of the People We Know The Village We All Need The village is not just a space for children to be nurtured; it is the core of our human existence.1 —MALESHA JESSIE TAYLOR

When we were at our best, our saving grace was other people.

Whether it was about marriage or parenting or location, for many of us, it doesn’t make sense to stick to the picture of family we came up with earlier in our lives. It might be that our desires change or that our circumstances just don’t line up with an old vision.

“I am not good at asking for help. It’s not where my mind goes first. It doesn’t even occur to me. And if I remember that I should, then it’s hard for me, it takes work to get around to it. I suppose it’s just kind of ingrained in me that I should not need help. On

Make This Space for People, Make This Space for Me

The struggle of asking for help is amplified when the society you live in already judges you as a failure.

For some of us, our best experiences of family, love, and safety are associated with home. Anyone who has had the sanctity and safety of home taken away from them has been traumatized. Not having it, or the threat of not having it, is emotionally terrorizing.

“I actually feel like my network is bigger now. My network’s the same, but I didn’t have the perception that all these people were a part of my network until I realized that they would show up for me in an emergency situation. I was really amazed that when I did start asking for help, there were people who I wouldn’t have said were my friends who were totally the people I could go to for help in an emergency. It made me feel like I had more friends than I realized.”

reality of our undeniable interdependence really shows up when we struggle.

So much of our reluctance to ask for help is fear of being too much for others to handle and fear of the subsequent rejection we’d feel if others can’t handle us.

is often information for me about what place those relationships can have in my life, and how much, and what kind of, energy I should give to them.

Food is where we meet, where we build, where we struggle, and where we survive. —PEOPLE’S KITCHEN COLLECTIVE

“Thank you to all the hands that touched this food on its way to our table.”

“We who believe in freedom cannot rest!”

there’s a sharing circle that happens, because that’s just what happens—I’m a circle person.

much connection happens in the kitchen, is because you are usually kind of doing something repetitive, and that releases something in your mind that creates a space that doesn’t just reside in the brain, but also is something that becomes part of the body.

Drop By Dinner. Here are guidelines:

CAYA1 (come as you are).

If you are getting this email, it’s because I have a level of comfort with you that I want to deepen so we can be more real, vulnerable, and connected.

“We do not serve you, we are being of service to you, as you are being of service to the person sitting next to you.”

“Everything is a gathering and a calling home. I want people to know they are welcomed and, more importantly, expected.”